


Strange and Bright

by Sepiidae



Category: Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 15:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sepiidae/pseuds/Sepiidae
Summary: Moon has to choose between Qibli and Winter, or she'll lose them both.Except maybe she doesn't have to choose at all.





	Strange and Bright

Moon knows the shape of the story that’s building itself between her and Qibli and Winter. She’s seen it in scrolls, knows the start and middle and end of it. She has feelings for both of them: Winter’s hidden, guarded tender heart, Qibli’s quick wit and openly-offered aid and the hurt she’s felt underneath it all. She can feel the edges of a future with either of the other dragons. She just has to make up her mind, she knows, and it will bloom out into the future before her.  
  
She’ll choose. Soon. Really. Because she knows that if she doesn’t decide between them, she’ll lose both of them.  
  
That’s how every story goes.  
  
—  
  
Qibli tries to sleep at night and his mind races down a dozen frantic paths of thought about whether Moon likes him or not and whether she’ll choose Winter over him (_of course she should he’s a prince and he’s beautiful and he’s strong and you’d have to be crazy to pick an all-wrong-inside-like-me dragon over that kind of frozen flawlessness_) and he thinks about Moon (_so kind and so special and there’s nobody out there like her and I’d do anything to keep her safe even if she doesn’t want me_), and he thinks about all the challenges they still have to face, and his mind burns through its tracks as he tries to puzzle a way to safety.  
And he thinks about Moon (_beautiful and I care about her even if she’ll leave me in the end_) and he thinks about Winter (_beautiful and I care about him even if they’ll both leave me in the end_) (_and they should_) (_and there’s no way I fit in this picture_) and for all the speed of his thoughts there’s paths they never walk down.  
  
—  
  
Winter is good at not thinking about things he shouldn’t think about. He very pointedly does not think about the hurt that would gouge its way through him if he thought about the closest friends, the ones he cares about most, leaving him to be together. He doesn’t think about how Qibli always knows the right thing to say to make him laugh or stop acting like a jerk. There’s a feeling like snow-blooming flowers— so impossible and perfect and tender— when he thinks about Moon.  
  
But he doesn’t think about any of that. Really. So it can’t hurt.  
  
—  
  
There’s a point where Moon sees the edges of two paths in front of her, where everything is dire and she knows that she’ll lose one of them, that she has to choose one of them to take with her, that it will shape the way things are between the three of them forever afterward.  
  
But she can’t bring herself to cut Winter or Qibli away— even with how Winter has lashed out. She takes them both.  
  
—  
  
When it’s all over, when there’s space to breathe and think and Darkstalker is really truly gone, Kinkajou hunts her down while she’s alone. She’s a shade of sky blue that Moon recognizes as the excitable RainWing’s attempt at calm composure. It would be more convincing if there weren’t waves of deeper blue curiosity and teal focus rippling along her scales.  
  
“Sooo… just wanted to see how you were doing, just wanted to say hi—”  
  
Moon sets down the scroll she was reading and tries to level a serious look at Kinkajou. It’s hard when her friend is trying so hard to act casual and doing such a poor job of it. “Hi, Kinkajou. Is there something you wanted?”  
  
Kinkajou cuts to the chase immediately. “Who’s it gonna be?! I _know_ Winter and Qibli both _like_ you like you but you haven’t said a word to me about who’s going to be your boyfriend! I know we were like _super_ busy saving the world for a while there and all but I was _sure_ you were gonna tell me once it was all over because we’re friends and _friends tell other friends which cute boy they wanna date_—”  
  
—  
  
Winter finds Qibli alone and stops, doesn’t know what to say. Minutes pass before Qibli looks up and tilts his head at him.  
  
“No, no, don’t tell me. This is a new form of training, right? Where you stand there silently and mimic…” He narrows his eyes thoughtfully, considering Winter as another ripple of nerves flickers over his head and sends a shiver down the spikes on his back with it. “I get it! You’re channeling the ferocious energies of a hedgehog to make you stronger. You’ve got that same prickly look.”  
  
Winter can’t help the laugh that snorts its way out of him and breaks the dam in his throat with it. “You’re the most absurd dragon I’ve ever met.”  
  
“Me? Really? You think that after meeting Kinkajou too? I’m honored.” Qibli presses his talons to his chest and bows his head humbly, and Winter has to hold back another laugh, because if he relaxes too much he’s not going to keep up the nerve to get the words out.  
  
“_Listen_, you clown,” he grumbles out, and clears his throat to try again in a more even tone. “… you deserve Moon. I know you’d be better for her. You’re— you’re warm and friendly and smart and funny and you know how to be good. You’re not all,” his voice hitches and he hates it and has to pause. Qibli isn’t clowning anymore: he’s just watching him, expression fixed. “You’re not… broken, like I am. You can act like a dragon _should_ when they care about someone. You can make her happy.”  
  
—  
  
“Kinkajou,” Moon says, trying to keep her voice calm and even and pretend her pulse isn’t roaring through her ears and making her dizzy. Kinkajou’s stream of words continues in the same_ c’mon-tell-me-already_ vein. “_Kinkajou_.”  
  
Kinkajou finally cuts short in the middle of her sentence, eyes wide and eager. “Yes?”  
  
It’s funny how hard it is to say something that she’s been thinking for weeks. Her voice comes out very soft. “… Kinkajou, I don’t know.”  
  
Kinkajou sits bolt upright and ripples yellow all over, the frills at her neck flared in surprise. “How do you not KNOW?? They both like you and it’s obvious you _want_ one of them to be your boyfriend!”  
  
There’s a lump in her throat. “I- I know I have to choose. But I can’t. I’ve seen the edges of how it could go, with either of them, but if I choose Winter I lose Qibli and if I choose Qibli I lose Winter, and no matter who I choose they _both_ lose each other, and I- it hurts to think about doing that. I don’t want to lose anyone, and they care about each other, and it feels wrong to pick a path where I make them lose each other. I’ve wondered if- if maybe it’ll be enough if I just leave and go somewhere on my own.”  
  
—  
  
Qibli takes a step forward and flicks out a wing, covering Winter’s back as the other dragon stands there, talons digging into the ground, every muscle tense from gritting out the words. The SandWing is so warm.  
  
“You’re not broken,” he says, and his tone of voice is so casual and certain that it’s enough to leach some of the tension from Winter’s spine. “You’re just hurt, and you’ve been hurt a lot, for a long time. We’re all kind of messed up, honestly. You can’t expect yourself to be perfect right away.”  
  
Winter hesitates and leans in against his friend, cool shoulder against warm. The warmth that always radiates from Qibli’s scales should be as uncomfortable as he used to find it, but it’s just… nice. It’s like sunlight on a bright day. There’s thoughts he carefully puts away and doesn’t think.  
  
“_Shouldn’t_ I be better by now if there weren’t something wrong with me?”  
  
“Moon feels weird and lonely and like she doesn’t fit in from being alone so long, and from having to hide her powers, and from what her powers do,” Qibli continues in that same conversational tone, like it’s not a big deal. “You don’t think _she’s_ broken, right?”  
  
“No!” Winter says sharply. “Of course not!”  
  
“Her reasons for being hurt aren’t more or less valid than yours. You should really extend yourself that same kindness.” Qibli turns to him and treats him to one of his own rakish grins, the kind where his snout puckers around his scar in a way that’s somehow endearing. “Or are you going to be offended that I’ve accused you of kindness?”  
  
Winter snorts, but goes quiet. He looks away before speaking again.  
  
“… _You’re_ not broken either, you know.”  
  
Qibli goes still where their sides are still touching.  
  
—  
  
Kinkajou’s yellow surprise softens to a buttercup color before flickering into a steady blue, the calm she was faking before made real, flecked with freckles of determination. Moon normally appreciates how fascinating it is to watch feelings bloom on her friend’s scales like a drop of ink on a wet scroll, but she’s too focused on her feelings at the moment.  
  
“Well, why didn’t you _say_ that was the problem?” Kinkajou asks. “I thought you had like, secret deeper feelings for Winter or Qibli that you were hiding, not that you _actually_ had the _same_ feelings for both of them! So what’s the problem?”  
  
Moon blinks. “The problem is I still have to pick one of them!” Even saying it out loud hurts a bit. It feels like an impossible decision—  
  
“Then why do you have to choose one at all?” Kinkajou tilts her head in earnest puzzlement.  
  
Moon feels like the ground has dropped out from under her and she hasn’t opened her wings yet. Her friend keeps talking.  
  
—  
  
Qibli feels like he’s a thousand shattered pieces that are only held together by immobility and that if he moves a muscle they’ll all instantly, irretrievably collapse. He feels like that a lot, but now Winter is so close to him— it seemed like a good idea— that there’s no way he hasn’t noticed.  
  
_That I’m fake that this is wrong with me that I feel something wrong that everything I feel is wrong that the way I think is wrong_  
  
“If I’m not broken, and Moon’s not broken, then you’re not broken. You’re the smartest dragon I know and… you care about everyone, right? You always seem to know what the right thing to say is.” Winter pauses and huffs out a little laugh. “Except when you’re being a big dumb jerk on purpose, but even that’s the right thing to do sometimes, because— because it helps me not do things I’ll regret.”  
  
Qibli’s wing is trembling over Winter’s back and he snaps it tightly shut to hide the quiver. The noise is too loud, but Winter doesn’t flinch where they’re pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, warm and cool scales.  
  
Instead he opens a wing— slowly, slowly enough for Qibli to move away if he wants to— and folds it over Qibli’s back, mirroring his hug with a new one. Qibli feels like he’s burning inside even with the cool touch. He looks at the ground, examines his talons in great detail.  
  
“If there’s nothing wrong with me, then why do I want too much?”  
  
—  
  
“If you like them both then what’s the problem at all, really? They both obviously like you, so it’s not like you have to worry about that when they’re making gooey eyes at you all the time, so—”  
  
“Kinkajou,” Moon manages to get in edgewise, “_What?_”  
  
Her RainWing friend gives her an exasperated little sigh. “I thought you just wanted one boyfriend! So I wanted to know the juicy gossip! But if you just want both of them you’ve basically already got two boyfriends and there’s _really_ nothing _exciting_ going on but you let me think there was which is really kind of mean of you but I know you mean well—”  
  
“I… both of them?” Moon says weakly. Her heartbeat is still a too-loud rush. Kinkajou stops and really looks at her, her frills flattening down completely as realization dawns.  
  
“Oh _no_, this is another thing that other tribes have all wrong, isn’t it?”  
  
There’s a future she didn’t feel with her powers before, and she doesn’t feel it with them now, but she can feel it unfurling in her mind’s eye all the same. Everyone together. Nobody left behind. No aching hole in her heart where someone close to her was cut out.  
  
“I— um— I have to go talk to— I have to ask—” Moon blurts out and is already flying, already searching for them.  
  
Kinkajou sighs and shakes her head as her friends soars away. She’d thought Moon _wanted_ one boyfriend, not that she thought that was the only _option_.  
  
“Other tribes are very interesting and fun to know, and someday I’m gonna get them all to tell me where all these lizard-brained ideas came from,” she proclaims to the jungle. Then she melts invisibly into her surroundings and goes off in search of something fun.  
  
—  
  
Moon finds them both together, huddled closer than she’s ever seen them, and her certainty deserts her completely when Qibli and Winter both fix their gazes on her. She thought she’d found the right words while she was flying, but maybe she hadn’t, after all.  
  
Winter has his wing over Qibli’s back in an embrace. He shifts a little, nervously, like he’s about to pull away when he sees her. Qibli leans into him just a little more- just a shift of muscles she’d almost miss— and he stills.  
  
“Hi, Moon,” Qibli says. His usual smile feels a little weak around the edges. Winter mumbles something to the ground.  
  
“… Hi,” she says. “Um… can I talk to you both, for a minute?”  
  
She knows Winter well enough to see the tension in his posture, and she knows Qibli well enough to recognize the sudden too-relaxed pose he slumps into as its own form of tension. But they both nod.  
  
Moon sits down, tail tucked tight around her to keep it from twitching anxiously, wings slicked back. It occurs to her suddenly that maybe she’s being incredibly conceited and this is all a very, very bad plan. She swallows.  
  
“Um. I— I’m supposed to, choose one of you, right?” She is absolutely saying everything the wrong way. She feels like she’s wilting. “To… um… would it be okay if—” She stops and takes a deep breath. Qibli and Winter’s eyes are on her and their gazes feel like they’re piercing right through her.  
  
“What I mean is, what if we were just… _all_ together?”  
  
It’s so quiet. It feels like minutes pass. Moon thinks very seriously about flying away, and continuing to fly, and maybe finding somewhere to live out the rest of her life as a hermit.  
  
Qibli looked fragile when she first approached, but when he speaks it’s with the confidence and focus she expects from him. “You mean you wouldn’t be choosing Winter over me, or me over Winter? You’d want both of us?”  
  
Winter’s voice, however, is unexpectedly soft when he repeats part of what she’s said. “_All_ together?”  
  
… and Moon looks at him, and his wing over Qibli’s back, and she feels like she’s been very stupid. But… relieved, too, because if she’s missed that, then it means that maybe this is the right choice. She sees Qibli glance sideways at the IceWing and go still for a moment, before relaxing.  
  
“Yes,” she says, softly, to both of them. “Um. If you’d like, I mean. I don’t know if it’s— Kinkajou acted like it was normal?”  
  
Winter snorts out a laugh so sudden and loud that Moon jumps and feels like some of her tension has evaporated in that moment. “_Kinkajou_ said you should just date both of us? And you thought that made it a good idea?”  
  
“Yes? No! I mean she acted like it was just, a normal thing for… um… for more than two dragons to be, a couple?” Moon wrinkles her snout the minute she’s said it. “That doesn’t even make sense when I say it.”  
  
“It’s not the norm, but it’s not unheard of for more than two SandWings to be together,” Qibli adds unexpectedly. “I just— Winter is so obviously the right choice. I thought of course you’d want him.”  
  
“He’s got sand for brains,” Winter says, deadpan, elbowing Qibli. The other male stumbles and laughs. “Since _he’s_ obviously the better choice.”  
  
Moon giggles, but she steps closer to both of them, holding out her talons for Qibli and Winter to grasp in their own. They do: warm and cool scales against her own midnight-dark.  
  
“This is the choice I want to make.” There’s a space between the three of them, delineated by their linked talons. “All of us together. Nobody cut away. But only if it’s what you want,” she adds, softly.  
  
—  
  
Winter has been carefully not thinking, not hoping, but now that the sky has crashed down on him it’s surprisingly easy to believe it’s happened.  
  
“Yes,” he says.  
  
—  
  
Qibli feels broken open instead of just broken, and he doesn’t know what to do with that yet, but maybe they can all find out together.  
  
“Of course,” he says, and he smiles at Moon, and takes Winter’s free talon in his own.  
  
—  
  
When she smiles the teardrop-bright scales at the corners of Moon’s eyes move. They wink in the light, and for the first time she can feel the threads of a future where there’s no hole in her heart. She can see the three of them, a long way off, for a moment: together, and grown stronger for it.  
  
And happy.  
  
  
—  
  
  
Kinkajou finds a really big, really sweet mango, and a sloth with interestingly patterned fur, and forgets to bother any of her friends about relationship norms in their tribes for the next month. It’s for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I was not going to write fix-it fic for the way this love triangle resolved, and then I did it anyway.
> 
> If you take one lesson from this fic, let it be this: love triangles are stupid and everyone should just kiss.


End file.
